


part one: mise en place

by andnowforyaya



Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Forests, Gen, M/M, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 09:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21719236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: Barefoot and golden-eyed, stores and movie theaters and coffee shops didn’t seem like places where Ten belonged.But he couldn’t belong to the woods completely, either, Kun thought to himself with a heavy feeling in his chest. Maybe Ten didn’t belong anywhere.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Moon Taeil/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517177
Comments: 82
Kudos: 511





	part one: mise en place

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to everyone who's hyped up and excited about this series <3 your support means a lot!
> 
> for those curious, i listened to [in the woods somewhere](https://open.spotify.com/track/5LDb4ZwsEAar1EIFd9iTkF) on repeat while writing this
> 
> **mise en place** (French pronunciation: [mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) is a French culinary phrase which means "putting in place" or "everything in its place".  
#

"Two times around the trail, no cheating. Winner gets to choose the movie tonight," Kun reminded Ten as they neared the edge of the woods behind the house. Ten was wearing one of Kun's red hoodies and a pair of old joggers that Kun had to help him cinch tightly at the waist, but Ten couldn't be convinced to put on a pair of shoes.

"Yeah, yeah," Ten said, shaking out his limbs as the rush of a race built up inside of him. Ten loved a good race, but often got too distracted by little sounds and little animals in the woods to finish them properly. "Let's go! Let's start!" He rolled his shoulders back and started to hop in place, from foot to foot.

"_ No cheating _," Kun emphasized. He himself was layered up in a long-sleeved waffle tea, a t-shirt over that, a thick zip-up fleece, and a beanie to top off the look. His gloves were thick to ward off frostbite, and he'd put on double layers of socks. A freeze had settled over the mountain, and even in the afternoon when the sun came out for a scant hour to warm the world, ice crystals clung to the trees. The snow covering the ground was packed and hard, like concrete.

Ten nodded again and smirked at Kun. His golden eyes flashed, warm in the otherwise silver, frost-covered landscape all around them. "One, two, three, go!"

"Hey!"

Ten took off at a sprint, and Kun knew he had no chance of keeping up, choosing instead to start at a familiar and slow but steady pace that he could maintain for a long distance, mindful of his steps and of the breaths that fogged in front of him, and he waited for the moment that Ten would inevitably become distracted and veer off the path. Sometimes they started off the run together, Ten patiently loping at his side until he could take the slow pace no longer and zoomed forward, circling back to Kun to show him interesting plants or rocks he'd found in the path ahead. Sometimes Ten would take on his wolf skin, and he'd run with Kun until the need to flit through the trees and hunt took over him. On those runs, Ten would come back hours later, shaking off his skin at the back door and stepping back into the warmth of the house with the woods still in his eyes.

Weeks have passed since that first morning that Ten woke up as a human on the couch next to Kun, surprising Kun breathless and making him question his grip on reality. Kun still remembered the absolute shock that had taken over his body as he tried to process what he was seeing in front of him. The fact that Ten was objectively gorgeous with his lithe frame and delicate, almost elfin facial features did not help matters, because it only supported the idea that Kun was making all of it up inside of his own head and that his broken mind had supplied him something he greatly desired -- hot, sexy company.

Cabin fever. That's what was happening to him. He made peace with it quickly since at least his version of cabin fever didn’t involve running around in a hedge maze with an axe and chopping people up and freezing to death overnight. 

No, his version of cabin fever was this:

Kun had blinked and Ten had joined him on the floor as a wolf. The beast loomed toward him and licked Kun's cheek, sitting back with worry in his golden eyes. _ “Change back,” _ Kun had said, his voice as thin as the needles on a pine tree. Ten shifted back into his human form, naked as a newborn.

He’d asked Ten to perform the trick three more times. On the fourth demonstration, Kun had thrown the blanket around Ten’s shoulders as he pushed him toward the back door. _ “I have no idea what you are, and you can’t stay here,” _ Kun had insisted.

Ten’s leg had still been giving him trouble. He had caught himself at the door, resisting Kun’s attempts to shove him out, the blanket thick around him, his hair wild and his eyes as bright and clear as a full moon. _ “What does it matter what I am? I’m yours, and you need me,” _ he’d said. _ “Besides, I have nowhere else to go, Kun.” _

Kun’s name had fallen from Ten’s lips like fresh, powdery snow as Kun's heartbeat echoed in his own ears. Kun had watched how Ten’s head drooped between his shoulders, his collar hanging heavy around his neck. It reminded Kun of the way Wolfie’s eyes would turn pitiful and imploring when Kun pushed him away from the stove because the burners were on and his nose was getting too close to the heat, or when Kun snapped at him because he was trailing mud into the living room.

And so Kun had closed the door with Ten still inside the house.

_ “Since I’m having a break with reality, this is just until your leg is completely better,” _ Kun had grumbled.

Kun hadn’t been sure about Ten, at first, convinced he couldn’t be real, but the next morning Ten had still been there, and the next, and the next. 

Pretty soon, he had to admit to himself that Ten wasn’t just a figment of his imagination, but a living being taking up space in his rented home, who needed food, and shelter, and constant reminders that he couldn’t just wander around the house naked all the time. He had slept on the couch, had worn Kun’s clothes (when he felt like it), and had eaten the dishes that resulted from Kun’s cooking experiments. At times, Ten moved in silence, appearing in rooms behind Kun suddenly like a shadow; other times, it seemed he couldn’t quite get a handle on his human limbs, and kept knocking things off tables or shelves by accident. 

Kun couldn’t find it in himself to kick Ten to the curb. He told himself it was because of Ten’s leg, but then it was because the snow had hardened to sheets of treacherous ice overnight, and then it was because the rain the next day had made the roads too slick and dangerous. He told himself that he could keep Ten safe; surely Ten was hiding from something out there in the woods, or even beyond, and here with Kun he had a place to sleep and eat. He didn’t like the idea of Ten running around between the trees in the winter terrain, alone and vulnerable to the dangers of the world, both natural and not. Before he realized it, another two weeks had passed, and Ten had carved out a space for himself in Kun’s temporary home. 

Living with Ten wasn’t too different from Kun's experience of living with a roommate in college, albeit a roommate who sometimes sat perfectly still in the window seat looking out into the backyard and growled at the small animals that found their way into the grass and garden. And Ten was helpful -- he washed the dishes once Kun showed him how to do it properly and he tidied up in the living room after they’d made a habit of watching movies together in the evenings after dinner. His competitive streak kept Kun running regularly, even as winter crept into the trees and seeped into the ground. 

The first full moon had come and gone without any sort of mayhem, and after, Kun had cornered Ten in the living room and asked why he hadn’t changed, gone for a run, howled at the moon all night like he was expecting him to, and Ten had wrinkled his nose and said, “Is that what you want me to do?” 

“No,” Kun had said aloud, because in that moment he’d realized he wanted Ten here, with him. He wanted Ten to tuck himself against his side on the couch as they lost themselves in another film. He wanted Ten to challenge him to a race in the mornings. He wanted Ten to whine about how the stew Kun had cooked that night had an obscene amount of vegetables in it. 

In the back of his mind there were questions forming that he wasn’t ready to ask, that wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready to ask. He wanted to know how Ten had become what he was, if it hurt when he shifted into his wolf skin, what it was like to run on all fours through the trees with an animal’s mind. Did he prefer one form over the other? When he became one, did he lose a bit of himself as the other? 

He read up on lycanthropy and werewolves and each myth and story seemed more ridiculous than the last. Ten was not a slobbering, blood-thirsty beast waiting to devour Kun in his sleep. He was kind and curious and sometimes buried his chicken wing bones in the cushions of the couch for later, but this was something they were working on.

No, there had to be some other explanation for Ten. Something that made sense. And Kun would find out what it was, eventually, once Ten was comfortable with Kun enough to share.

Ten’s leg had healed. Neither of them talked about it.

Now, Kun was nearing the rock that marked the end of the trail. His thighs were not yet burning, and his body was warm and loose. He'd seen no sign of Ten for the last mile or so and wondered if this was because Ten was successfully circling the trail again, so far ahead of Kun, or because he'd gotten lost tracking a scent that had piqued his interest. Every once in a while, he heard a branch snap under the weight of the ice coating it, and the impact of the fall echoed through the trees.

Other than that, things were entirely quiet and still.

"Ten?" Kun called out, keeping his pace and his voice steady. The wind whistled through the bare branches that reminded Kun of a skeleton's fingers overhead. There was no answer, but Kun hadn’t really expected one. 

As he ran, the familiar cadence of a conversation reached him. People were speaking in the woods behind him, or beside him. He paused, jogging in place, and turned from side to side to see if the people were on the trail.

No one. Because of the density of the woods, the low murmur of conversation seemed to come from every direction. He couldn’t make out the words, just the tone: rushed and low, like a whispered argument. He swallowed around the burning in his throat and slowed down to a walk, sensing the need to be quiet, and the whispers followed him as he walked. 

Kun passed the rock jutting out from between two thick trees and choked on a yelp as he was tackled from behind and rolled off the trail and into the brush. He struggled under a strong, solid body, and a hand covered his mouth as the person above him hissed into his ear: “Quiet, Kun.”

Kun froze. It was Ten. Kun grunted and lay still on his stomach, wanting very much to bite the fingers that still covered his mouth. Ten was perched above him on all fours like a dog standing guard over his pup -- or perhaps, like a wolf over his charge -- straddling the small of Kun’s back. He could feel Ten’s hot breath against the back of his ear and imagined he could hear Ten’s heart beating hard in his chest, too. He strained to hear whatever it was that Ten was hearing, whatever it was that Ten was sensing, but the voices had gone completely, and the forest was still and silent again. 

Ten lowered his hand. 

Kun asked, “What is it?”

“Shh!” Ten admonished him. Kun tried to rise, but Ten was as immovable as marble. “Stay still.”

“It’s probably just hikers--”

“It isn’t,” Ten said.

Kun quieted, the silence of the woods suddenly ringing in his ears. It was unnatural, Kun realized, how nothing moved or breathed or made a noise. If not for Ten’s heart pounding against the back of Kun’s chest, he would have imagined himself completely alone in the world.

Ten kept Kun there like that until Kun started to shiver from the cold seeping up through his clothes from the ground. When Ten pulled him up, Kun realized he couldn’t quite feel his fingers even with the protection of the thick gloves covering them. “What was that?” Kun asked, his teeth chattering as Ten rubbed his hands over Kun’s arms in an attempt to warm him.

“Hunters, I think,” Ten said.

Confusion clouded Kun’s mind. Ten pressed in close, wrapping his arms around Kun’s middle, transferring his warmth to him. Kun said, “Doubt there’s anything in the woods for them to hunt in the snow.”

“There is,” Ten said, clipped and stoic. He shuffled Kun forward and back onto the trail, adding in a softer tone, “But don’t worry about it. Let’s go. You need to warm up.”

There was more Kun wanted to ask Ten in that moment -- How did Ten know they were hunters? What exactly were they hunting? Why’d he cover Kun like that? -- but he could tell from the closed expression on Ten’s face that it was something Ten either didn’t know how to talk about or didn’t want to talk about. There were a few topics that Kun had discovered so far that seemed to be hard limits for Ten: blood relatives, how he ended up in the woods outside of Vancouver, and peaches. Ten hated that fuzz-covered fruit.

Kun filed his questions away to the back of his mind to join a growing pile, and said instead, “Yeah, I’m freezing. God, my muscles are going to be so sore...I need to stretch or they’ll just snap in half in the morning tomorrow.”

Ten pulled on Kun’s arm, alarmed. “What? Seriously?”

“No.” Kun’s lips twisted into an amused grin. It was so easy riling Ten up sometimes. “They won’t snap. I’ll just be sore.”

“Humans are so fragile,” Ten said with a drop of wonder in his voice. “I don’t want you to snap in half. You’ll sit in front of the heat box until you’re all soft and bendy again.”

That sounded nice -- relaxing in front of the radiator with Ten curled behind his back or at his feet, sipping some piping hot tea out of a mug and reading the day’s news. This, too, had become a habit over the past couple of weeks, usually as part of an after-dinner routine that helped them both wind down for the night. “If I fall asleep, it’ll mess up my schedule,” Kun complained.

“Then mess it up,” Ten proposed wisely. His smile, when shared with Kun, was bright and sharp.

.

Kun sat wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, listening to the old radiator click and clack after Ten had turned it up to its highest setting. Heat permeated the room and slowly thawed out his frozen limbs, and he shivered in fits and spurts as his body adjusted to the change in temperature. Eyeing the radiator, Kun thought that he would have to turn it back down himself later once the heat was unbearable, since Ten didn't seem to care for (or understand) the operational settings of it and associated "on" with "full blast" and "off" with "can touch pipe with bare hand without burning".

"What will you cook for lunch?" Ten asked as he flitted around the living room, finally settling against the wall by the window beside the front door. He seemed to be searching for something in the distance through the glass, and Kun thought that perhaps it was the hunters that Ten didn't want to talk about.

"I was thinking about a pie," Kun offered, tugging the wool blanket higher up around his shoulders. "We've got that leftover roast chicken, some veg, some herbs. I haven't done a pastry in a while..."

"Will it take a long time?"

"The pastry? Maybe, if I want to get it right. There are a lot of steps."

"Can I help?" Ten turned to Kun suddenly, the interest clear in his bright, golden eyes, and Kun couldn't hold back the laugh that tumbled from his lips.

"Maybe," Kun said, pleased. "If you listen to everything I say. Pastry is very finicky."

Ten wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms in front of his chest, sneaking another glance out the window. "What's finicky?"

"Fussy," Kun explained. "In the case of pastry, if you mess up just one thing you usually have to start all over to get it right again."

Ten nodded knowingly. "Ah. You're finicky."

Kun spluttered and felt heat settling into his cheeks, coloring them red. "What--? I'm not--"

"You're finicking with your recipes because you make the same thing all the time but just change one small thing about it, each time," Ten said. "You finick your clothes because it takes you a million years to get dressed, even though you're just going down the mountain to buy carrots and all clothes look the same."

"All clothes do _ not _look the same," Kun argued. "And you're not using the word correctly. It's just an adjective, not a verb."

Ten’s brows knit together in confusion, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. After a moment, he huffed, "Adjectives and verbs! Enough with the words! I'm starving,” and stomped into the kitchen, growling under his breath. 

Kun chuckled again, knowing Ten wouldn't stay angry or frustrated for long. As he rose to join him, he listened to Ten whispering the new word to himself again and again, learning it and committing it to memory.

.

The pastry was a disaster. Even though Kun stood next to Ten at the counter and watched over his every move as he carefully measured out flour, and butter, and ice water, when it came to the mixing, Ten’s hands were too hot and all the butter melted into the dough within seconds. Three batches of ruined dough later, Ten threw up his hands and announced, “I hate pie.”

“You do not,” Kun said, winding his fingers across the back of Ten’s neck and squeezing, smiling a little to himself when Ten’s head fell back, limp and relaxed with the now familiar touch. “You love eating it, at least.”

“You make the crust,” Ten said. His voice had dropped in volume and pitch with Kun’s kneading, and his eyelids fluttered. He leaned forward with a groan, propping himself up on the counter by his hands. “I’ll just watch.”

Kun tweaked Ten’s ear as he took over his place at the counter, snatching his hand away quickly when Ten reflexively turned and snapped his teeth at him playfully. “Stop that.” He felt like thwapping him on the nose, the way he might have if Ten were still a dog -- a wolf-dog -- but being that Ten was human now, he felt a little strange about doing that. Sometimes Ten’s actions and behaviors were so reminiscent of Wolfie that Kun wondered where the human side of him actually began. “You can help with the filling.”

Ten perked up with a small but distinctly canine-like noise of interest. 

“That doesn’t mean eating all the roast chicken before it has the chance of going into the pie,” Kun warned him.

“I can help with the spices!” Ten offered.

Kun hummed in acknowledgment, nodding his head as Ten scampered off to the pantry in the corner, where Kun stored a variety of dried spices in small mason jars on a shelf that moved on wheels. There were fresher herbs in the refrigerator, cleaned and wrapped in paper towels, ready to be chopped or trimmed, but Kun would take those out later. He wiped down his work station and sealed the ruined batches of dough into ziploc baggies, hoping inspiration might strike him later to figure out what he could do with them. He didn’t like to waste.

The pastry dough came together under his hands quickly and efficiently, a pale golden color and still a bit crumbly. As he worked the dough, he listened to the sounds of Ten unscrewing and screwing the tops of the mason jars and shuffling them around, sniffing the contents of each one and sighing happily when something smelled right to him. Alternatively, the little gagging noises Ten made when something smelled off to him made Kun chuckle to himself at the counter.

Just as Kun was tipping the dough out onto a sheet of cling film to be wrapped and left to rest in the refrigerator, Ten came to him with a shirtful of baby mason jars. He stood up on his toes so that he could dump all the jars in his makeshift kangaroo pouch onto the counter, where they clattered and rolled, one very nearly rolling off the edge before Ten caught it with a hand. 

“These,” Ten said. He looked at Kun with a determined gleam in his eye, the nervousness underneath the veneer of confidence just barely visible in the way he nibbled on the inside of his cheek. Kun had been surprised by Ten’s curiosity in his kitchen, and then pleased when he discovered that Ten’s nose and sense of smell were both finely developed and that he could leverage this innate talent when experimenting with his recipes.

Kun hummed again, smiling as he stood each jar upright to read the labels: mustard seed and cumin powder, onion seed and ginger powder. Ten had also brought over a jar of garam masala, of chili powder, and of turmeric powder the color of goldenrod. “Seems like we’re making a curry pie?” Kun asked.

Ten took the garam masala from Kun’s hand and opened it up, inhaling deeply. “Smells familiar,” he said. “Like warmth. Like heating up under the sun. Sweaty.” He coughed when his eyes watered as the mix of spices overtook his senses.

Kun laughed softly and separated the ginger powder from the batch. “You can put this one back. Let’s go with fresh ginger. And garlic. Can you get those out from the fridge?”

They worked well together, Ten following his instructions as Kun decided which vegetables he’d chop up to go with the chicken in the filling. Ten was still rather careless with a knife -- not clumsy, really, just not practiced -- so Kun had him chop the carrots up into small chunks while he worked on the potatoes and onions, which he deemed trickier to handle. They toasted the spices in a pan over the stove, and Kun laughed when the cumin seeds popping from being exposed to the intense heat had Ten dashing under the table for cover. He sobered when Ten reemerged sullen and embarrassed, and scratched his fingers through Ten’s hair, against his scalp, to appease him. 

When the pie was in the oven, Kun decided it was time for a shower, and gave Ten strict orders not to open the oven to check on the pie as this would slow the baking process down. Ten made to follow him up the stairs, but Kun turned around and wagged a finger at him. “No. Stay,” he ordered. 

“I could just come in with you into the bathroom and then you don’t have to worry about me checking on the pie,” Ten said, to which Kun squawked and said, “Absolutely not.” 

Ten frowned but kept his feet firmly in place, and when Kun rounded the corner into his bedroom to grab the things he needed for his shower, he looked back and saw Ten still waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

.

Since Kun figured they wouldn’t be leaving the house again, he skipped his daily shave but still allowed himself the luxury of patting toner and cream onto his face and neck. He dotted eye cream on with his ring finger and gently massaged the cool lotion into his skin, sighing at his own reflection in the slightly fogged up mirror. With the pie in the oven in the back of his mind, he gave himself a once over. 

His hair was getting long. Ten’s hair was downright shaggy compared to Kun’s, his bangs constantly falling into his face, but Kun liked to keep his hair neatly trimmed on the sides with a little bit to play with and style on top. He’d have to drive into town soon and stock up on essentials like paper towels and toilet paper and soap, so perhaps he’d try to find a shop for a trim, as well. He snickered at the thought of wrangling Ten into a salon chair for a cut. He’d probably try to bite the stylist’s fingers off with the first snap of their scissors. 

The image of a group of stylists wrestling Ten into a salon chair for a grooming stayed with him, and he kept his movements light as he slipped into a soft sweater and a pair of sweats that cinched at the ankles after his shower. Perhaps he’d take Ten to the cute coffee shop in town, or they’d see a movie together in the theater? He wondered how long it had been since Ten had stepped foot into a store, since he couldn’t picture it. Barefoot and golden-eyed, stores and movie theaters and coffee shops didn’t seem like places where Ten belonged. 

But he couldn’t belong to the woods completely, either, Kun thought to himself with a heavy feeling in his chest. Maybe Ten didn’t belong anywhere.

He left his bedroom and plodded down the stairs, hand sliding along the railing. He could hear the hum of the radiator but nothing else, and found that odd until he saw Ten sprawled out prone on the couch, asleep, the hoodie he was wearing ridden halfway up his torso and revealing a tight, smooth belly. His hipbones above the elastic band of the sweats jut out, noticeable and sharp. With a start, Kun realized that Ten’s wolf shape was larger than his human one, and that made his heart tighten painfully. 

He stepped into the kitchen quickly, choosing not to linger. The pie, when he checked it through the window in the oven door, was turning golden brown on top, and probably close to done. He’d recorded the spice measurements and steps they’d taken before to get to this point, just in case it was a pie worth going into Kun’s book, which was still lacking in a unifying theme. The idea to develop the cookbook around the theme of mushrooms had come and gone, especially since now that it was winter, all the mushrooms he might have foraged were frozen solid and buried under frost. He’d give the pie another couple of minutes and then check on it again with a thermometer. In the meantime, he went back into the living room and rummaged through the piles of cooking and lifestyle magazines on the coffee table to find his laptop, unearthing it from the debris of recipe cuttings and ripped-out pages of inspirational photos. 

Ten was still spread out across most of the couch, and Kun noticed a pile of magazines and books had grown on the seat of the armchair. He didn’t feel like moving it. Instead, he tapped Ten’s calf and sat in the space that appeared when Ten curled up his legs like a hedgehog.

“Ungh,” Ten growled at being woken, one eye slitting open to glare at Kun. 

Kun rested his palm over Ten’s calf and squeezed in apology. “Just gonna get some work done,” he explained. “Pie’s almost ready.”

“Starving,” Ten complained again. He groaned as he stretched slowly, pushing at Kun’s thighs with his feet as he inhaled deeply. Then he inhaled again. And again. 

Kun balanced his laptop on his thighs and opened the screen. The blue glare threw light into his face, and Ten sat up and crawled over to him before plopping his face into Kun’s neck without ceremony.

“Hey!” Kun yelped, too surprised to push Ten away. 

But Ten was only sniffing. He sniffed Kun’s cheek next, and then partway down his chest. He said, sitting back on his ankles looking perturbed, “You smell different.” 

“I -- what?” Kun tried to imagine what Ten could mean. Did he smell bad? Did he not scrub his armpits enough? 

Ten leaned forward and sniffed him again, and this time he cupped Kun’s cheek in his palm, his hand meeting the fine sprinkling of stubble on Kun’s chin. “Oh,” Ten breathed, his eyes burning bright. The color of his irises reminded Kun of magma. “That’s--” He suddenly pressed his cheek against Kun’s cheek and rubbed himself across the tiny, coarse hairs that were growing in at Kun’s jawline and made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat. 

Kun panicked, planting one hand in the middle of Ten’s chest and pushing while the other held his laptop secure over his legs. Ten went tumbling back with a grunt, but caught himself before he could fall from the cushions. His eyes were still glowing like magma from the center of the earth. Kun’s pulse had skyrocketed, and he wasn’t sure if the adrenaline now pumping through his veins was because of fear or something else. 

“What was that?” Kun asked, his voice strained and tight. He kept his hand raised slightly, and Ten stayed his distance, his shoulders moving as his chest heaved with each breath. Kun’s ears rang in the ensuing, tense silence.

Finally, Ten blinked, and the fire behind his eyes extinguished suddenly. Uncertainty remained. “I’m sorry,” Ten whispered. “You just smell so _ good _.” He drew the hood of the sweater up over his head and pulled at the strings until the soft fabric started to tighten around his face. Groaning, Ten made himself a ball on the couch, crashing face-first into the cushions. “Fuck.”

Kun exhaled shakily, watching Ten’s back grow and shrink with every breath. He gripped the edges of his laptop screen just for something to hold onto. "Do I have to be scared of you eating me now?"

"I don't eat people!" Ten's voice was muffled by the cushions. "I'm not like that!"

"I'm going to check on the pie," Kun announced quickly, putting his laptop back onto the coffee table and on top of a pile of magazines. 

Ten groaned into the couch and curled up even tighter. "Sorry," he said again.

Kun escaped to the kitchen, where because the oven had been on for almost an hour, the air was stuffy and warm. He took a deep, full breath and wondered what it meant when Ten's eyes flashed like that, like thousands of glittering embers. It burned where Ten's cheek had grazed against his own. His face felt hot. 

He went over to the window and heaved the heavy pane open from the bottom a couple of inches in order to let in cool air to circulate. Looking down at the sill, he noticed a thin, perfectly straight line of white powder where the pane had been shut, and thought it was snow that had seeped through, but when he brushed at it with his hand, it was cool and dry. He held his finger up closer to his eye to inspect the grains that had stuck to his skin. Salt.

Behind him, the oven timer went off with a shrill beep, and he turned away from the window, the salt forgotten.

The pie was perfect, the pastry crisp and golden around the edges and flaky on top. The fragrances from the spices had bloomed during cooking, and the whole kitchen smelled of curry. Kun's mouth watered, but he remembered with some disappointment, serrated knife in one hand and a spatula in the other, that he'd have to let the pie sit for a while longer to cool before they could eat it. 

He walked back to the living room with the news. "We'll have to wait some more."

Ten was still on the couch, lying on his side and hugging a throw pillow to his chest, his cheek smushed against the seat. "So much waiting," he complained in a monotone voice.

"Can I sit?" Kun asked and pointed to the space beside Ten's head. Ten immediately made more space for him and watched Kun warily as he sat down. Kun put his hands on his thighs, rubbing them down awkwardly. "So I'm guessing that was as weird for you as it was for me?"

"Weird?" Ten's shoulders shrunk.

"Maybe not weird," Kun said quickly. "Just unexpected."

"You know I'd never hurt you, right?" Ten said. He looked so earnest gazing up at Kun, his eyes huge and round and his hair flopped in front of his face as he hugged the pillow to his chest. 

Kun sank into the cushions and nodded. "I know. I know you won't." He patted his thigh and grinned when Ten shifted up to lay his head in Kun's lap. His hand fell to Ten's hair, to his ear, and he pet the curve of the soft shell.

Ten pressed up into the touch, eyes closing. "I'll keep you safe," he promised.

"From what?" Kun thought again of the hunters from earlier and wondered what had become of them. 

"From bears," Ten teased him with a laugh that sounded like a soft bark. Kun scratched his fingers through Ten's hair affectionately, and Ten squirmed under the playful assault until he took hold of Kun's hand and held it under his nose, close enough for Kun to feel his breaths break across his palm. "From anything that would hurt you," Ten said.

"Is there a lot out there that would?" Kun asked. 

"There's a lot you don't know," Ten said quietly. "These woods are...old. Old and hungry."

Kun shivered when Ten's lips met his palm. It didn't feel like a kiss, but like reassurance. A promise. "How can the woods be hungry?” Kun asked. “Are there more...people out there? People like you?"

"People like me, and people not like me," Ten said cryptically. 

"And the people not like you, are they dangerous?"

Ten opened his eyes. They were burning with the color of the setting sun. "I caught your scent one morning when you were running. I didn't know what it was at first but I knew I had to follow it. You smell like...A fire that's just been put out. Or twilight, just before it goes dark. I don't know how else to describe it."

Kun flushed even though he has a hard time putting the scent together in his mind. Smoky and metallic, perhaps, but warm. Kinetic. Imagine bottling that up and selling it as a cologne! "Do I always smell like that to you?"

"No…" Ten ducked his eyes shyly and chewed on his lips. "Sometimes you smell like...Like someone laughing and holding me close. A soft blanket. Safety.” Ten paused, thinking hard. “Joy.”

Kun knew those were not smells. What Ten was describing were probably the memories and emotions he associated with Kun’s scent, and with mounting sorrow in his heart Kun realized what Ten was describing was probably family, and if not family, then at the very least, a home. He carded his fingers through Ten’s hair again and murmured, awe in his voice, “Is that why you chased after me? Because I smell like your favorite blanket?”

Ten laughed and butted his head into Kun’s stomach. “Maybe, but also because you smell like whatever you’re cooking. So you always smell delicious.”

Kun gasped. “So I _ do _smell like food to you.”

“You made me want to be human again just to have a taste,” Ten said. “To be close…” His face scrunched up in concentration. “That reminds me -- Why didn’t you like any of my gifts? You could have cooked with them!”

Kun was silent as he tried to figure out what Ten could mean by “gifts”, and when he realized, he stuck out his tongue in disgust and offense. “You mean the dead animals on my steps? That was you?”

“I guess there’s not a lot of meat on a squirrel,” Ten said sadly. 

Kun tried not to gag. He was a chef by trade but hadn’t really delved into the world of butchering aside from the basics, and couldn’t really imagine himself skinning a dead animal. “It was, um, a nice gesture,” Kun tried to say with a straight face.

Ten’s lips curled into a grin that spelled mischief. “Now that I’ve been human-shaped for a couple of weeks, I know that it wasn’t.”

_ Human-shaped _. Ten was snuggled into his lap and sighed every so often as Kun’s fingers stroked through his hair, peaceful and content. 

"How long were you a wolf, before that?"

"I dunno," Ten hummed. "Three moons, maybe? It was spring the last I remember. Time passes differently in different shapes."

“Have you ever…” Kun’s fingers tightened in Ten’s hair unintentionally, but all Ten did was lean into the grip. “Have you ever forgotten you’re human?”

Ten didn’t say anything for a while, and when Kun looked down at the figure in his lap he noticed Ten’s eyes were closed again. Thinking he had fallen asleep, Kun resumed stroking his fingers through Ten’s hair, when Ten licked his lips and spoke. “I have,” he said quietly. “But things bring me back. Things like you.”

Kun flushed again. The way Ten talked about him, it was like Kun was something very interesting or special, like a comet that whipped across the sky once every seven years. Kun didn’t feel like a comet at all; if anything, he was space junk that had been mistakenly categorized as a star. He laughed to cover up how uncomfortable he was with the notion that he was anything other than ordinary. “Just the way I smell,” he said.

“No!” Ten sat up under his hand suddenly, startling him. He looked at Kun as though Kun had said something that offended him personally. “You don’t understand. Your scent is -- it’s incredible.”

“I really don’t see what’s so special--”

“I caught your scent and gave chase,” Ten said fervently, eyes bright like a fever. “Others have. Others will. Your scent is something that hasn’t passed through these woods in a while.”

“And what’s that?” Kun asked, apprehensive and curious.

“Alchemy,” Ten said. “Magic.”

.

There was nothing magical about Kun, of this Kun was quite sure. What Ten was smelling on him was probably his experiments with activated charcoal and smoked cedar wood chips. The only son of two doctors, his parents had ultimately been supportive of, though still didn’t really understand, Kun’s decision to drop out halfway through finishing his business degree to go to culinary school instead. There was nothing stable about the restaurant business, they pointed out to him. Wouldn’t he rather have a job that was steady and guaranteed? Like medicine? People would always need doctors.

By that logic, Kun had gently rebutted, people would always need food, right?

They had been inclined to agree.

He worked hard to catch up to his peers, suffering sleepless nights and countless burns from splattering oil and grease. But he was driven. Kun had always loved cooking for people -- the joy he derived from putting something delicious that he had created, that he had toiled over and poured himself into in some way, into the hands and mouths of others and bringing a smile to someone’s face was like a drug to him. 

And people loved his food. His chicken corn soup was often requested by friends as a cure for many ailments, from the slightest sniffle to a burning fever. When he worked his way up the restaurant food chain, the restaurants that employed him flourished. Kun wasn’t magical, but maybe he was lucky.

He was lucky that he’d found work in something he loved. He was lucky that Doyoung was a good friend and advocate for his work. He was lucky that he was relatively attractive and fit, and that his face looked good in photos and on screens. 

After a hearty lunch of savory chicken pie, Ten had attempted to read one of the books from the owner’s shelves in the living room but, after fifteen minutes of huffing and grunting as he turned the pages on the couch, had declared the book unreadable and announced he’d be running off some energy outside. 

And so, Kun worked. He had a couple of recipes that he was ready to send over to Doyoung, but Doyoung had also requested to see a draft of his opening chapter, or at least an anecdote of some kind he’d weaving into the book, and all Kun had so far on that request was an empty document and a blinking cursor. He needed a theme.

Bored after staring at his screen for what felt like a whole hour with nothing to show for it except for “research” that included a short article detailing a brief history of alchemy, Kun thought about the last time he’d interacted with someone who wasn’t Ten, who, for all his sweetness and eagerness to please, still shook himself to dry off after a shower and dripped water all over the floors and furniture to Kun’s chagrin. Xuxi often called or texted, but their conversations were brief as the vet’s office became busier with the worsening weather. Doyoung nagged Kun to submit more work, so Kun hardly classified their interactions as conversation, though every once in awhile Doyoung also asked how he was handling the solitude up here in the mountains.

“Very well,” Kun liked to tell him. He was surprised by how quickly time was passing and how accustomed he’d grown to the slow rhythm of a hermit-ish life. 

But he was craving the company of others. When he lived in the city, Kun entertained his circle of friends to dinner and a night of board games almost every other weekend. Thinking of evenings warmed by full bellies, wine and friendly competition, Kun called the only other person he had a number for in the area, Johnny.

Johnny answered quickly, his tone pleasant and friendly, and accepted Kun's impromptu invitation to dinner in a couple of hours. "I have a friend visiting," Kun lied between his teeth, thinking of Ten. "It would be nice for you to meet him, I think."

“I’ll bring Taeil and a bottle of the nice stuff,” Johnny said. “It’s a date!”

.

A chill crept in slowly through the back door and into the living room. Kun, snuggled under the throw blanket on the couch and losing himself in “research” again, only noticed when his breath started to mist in front of him. He pulled the blanket further up around his shoulders and grumbled as he folded his legs underneath himself to warm his feet. “Ten! You left the back door open again!” he called out into the house.

Nothing in the house answered.

Kun craned his neck to arched his back to see over the back of the couch and to the back door. Indeed, it was hanging wide open; powdery snow had started to blow in, melting and leaving small puddles by the entrance. Kun made a mental note to put down a mat there. Suppressing a shiver, Kun stood, shedding the blanket and toeing quickly over to the door. He skirted around the puddles and closed it just as a strong gust of wind whistled through the trees and rattled against the doorframe and windows. 

His teeth were chattering. Kun hugged his arms over his chest and looked out into the backyard. He could see footprints in the snow that began as human feet and changed into a wolf’s paws leading away from the house, but he couldn’t find a second set of prints in the opposite direction, coming back. 

Frowning, Kun listened for sounds of Ten in the house. He wandered back into the living room and swept his gaze over the space, wondering if he’d somehow missed him and Ten was actually curled up at the foot of the armchair or on the rug next to the radiator, but he wasn’t there. He peeked into the kitchen but only saw a single slice of chicken pie, leftover from their lunch, sitting on the counter in the pie tin. The tiny room connected to the living room containing the compact washer/dryer unit was empty as well. Perplexed, Kun headed upstairs.

The third step up creaked and the sixth step up groaned, but Kun was used to these noises and ignored them. There weren’t many places left for Ten to hide. The second floor was mostly just Kun’s bedroom, the bathroom within, and an extra closet in the hallway. 

The closet, Kun checked first. Nothing but fresh linens. No space for a wolf or a man in there, anyway.

“Ten?” Kun’s mind was racing; he kept thinking about the set of footprints he _ hadn’t _seen in the snow. If Ten hadn’t returned, who had opened his back door? Was there someone else in the house now? Should he grab a weapon? He should have grabbed a knife or the rolling pin from the kitchen. In the hallway closet, Kun found an old metal tool box tucked away in the back corner on the floor. He dragged it over to himself, opened it and rifled through the tools inside, finding a hammer about the length of his forearm that he took out. He felt the heft of its head in his palm. 

“Ten? I’m coming into the bedroom,” Kun announced, wielding the hammer. Then, in a weaker whisper under his breath, “If there's anyone there, I hope it’s you and not a murderer who stole into my home…”

The door whined on its hinges as Kun slowly pushed his way inside. He caught the scent of his own shower gel -- evergreen and spices -- heavy in the air and saw immediately that the window was open, the curtains dancing in the breeze. Then, a heavy gust of wind whipped through the window frame and chilled his breath in front of him, and he flung his arms around himself in an attempt to ward off the freeze, nearly knocking himself out with the hammer in the process. The hairs on the back of Kun’s neck stood on end.

“Ten, this isn’t funny,” Kun huffed. He stepped inside the room properly and then yelled as a blur of motion to his right materialized into a shadow and then into a man who knocked him back against the wall. Despite having every intention to use the hammer as a weapon to defend himself, in the face of danger Kun’s synapses stopped firing and his fingers went limp. The hammer dropped from his hand.

Ten caught it before it could land on his foot and break it. "Were you gonna use that on me?"

Kun peeked his eyes open and felt his face grow warm in embarrassment and maybe a tinge of anger. “You! I thought you were an intruder!” He pushed at Ten’s shoulders before realizing that Ten’s shoulders were bare, and that his skin was still sticky-damp, and that water was dripping from his hair. He smelled like Kun’s body wash. The towel around his waist was tiny, draped low over his hips and barely hanging on. 

“Argh!” he screamed, frustrated and scared and trying not to think about how good Ten’s body looked in this light. His waist was tight and narrow, his stomach smooth and soft-looking, though Kun knew the muscles underneath the deceptive layer of fluff would be wiry and lean. When Kun squeezed his hands around Ten's upper arms he felt as if he was trying to squeeze water from pure granite.

Ten tossed the hammer behind himself carelessly, but it landed and bounced on the bed. With both hands, he held onto Kun’s wrists to prevent his attacks and dipped his nose against Kun’s throat, inhaling deeply, and when he pulled away his eyes were sharp and narrowed. Kun suppressed a tremor that started in his knees. “You’re scared,” Ten said. “Is there something in the house?”

“You!” Kun snapped, yanking his wrists away from Ten’s loose grip. He kept his eyes trained on Ten's face even though he felt the slow unraveling of the towel around Ten's waist was trying to hypnotize him. A thought flitted across his mind: how his hands, broad and long-fingered, would fit so nicely around Ten's trim waist. “Why didn’t you close the door downstairs?”

Ten’s brow furrowed. “I did.”

“No, when you came back,” Kun insisted.

“I came back through this window,” Ten said, tilting his head as he thought. He put his hands on his hips and puffed up his chest. “I wanted to see if I could jump to the deck in case...just in case I needed to. Update: I can.” His grinned, pleased with himself.

“Well, the back door was open,” Kun said. “You must not have closed it properly before.”

Ten frowned, his eyes flashing gold as the line of his shoulders hardened and his muscles rippled underneath his skin. Kun’s gaze dipped to the towel again. He swallowed around a dry throat. Ten said, “Wait. Stay here,” and turned to go.

Kun pulled him back by his hand. “Hold on,” he murmured. His fingers nimbly tread along the top of the towel, barely grazing skin, and he secured the cloth more tightly around Ten’s waist. “At least put some pants on,” he added.

“No,” Ten said with a rumble in his voice like a growl. He stood very still as Kun worked, frozen in place with his arms stuck out beside him at odd angles. When Kun was done, he let his arms fall. His skin was so warm Kun was surprised steam wasn’t rising from his pores. “Later,” Ten acceded. “Keep the door closed while I check the house.”

Kun felt silly when Ten left, barred in his own room waiting for Ten to return, like a child waiting for a parent to check for monsters in the closet. He sat on the very corner of the mattress, both knees jiggling under his hands, and suddenly thought about the time he’d made soup for his roommates at the tail end of winter break during freshman year of college, all of them dreading the start of classes the next morning after weeks of lethargy, waking up whenever they wanted, and devouring comfort foods without abandon. “This tastes like my mom’s matzo ball soup,” one of them had said. “No way,” the other had chimed in, slurping noisily, “this tastes just like my grandma’s seafood surprise.” The soup tasted like neither to Kun; he’d made his family’s recipe for minced beef and cilantro. 

How could the same soup taste so differently to each of them? Then, they’d chalked it up to a combination of nostalgia and delirium and slept soundly that night, and Kun had thought it was a small miracle that no one had slept through their alarms in the morning.

But now…?

Kun jumped up to his feet when Ten burst through the door as a wolf. He bounded straight for Kun and landed half on top of him as Kun fell back against the bed. “Off,” Kun groaned as Ten licked his cheek, his tail wagging vigorously. Ten stepped off him with a whine, sitting back on his haunches, and Kun lifted himself back upright. “So I’m guessing you didn’t find anything?”

Ten put his massive head in Kun’s lap. His ears tipped backwards slightly as he whined again. His lack of alarm was his answer, and Kun immediately felt more at ease. The house was safe. Kun scratched the top of his head to show his appreciation, right between his ears, and Ten’s eyes fell shut.

“You did good, didn’t you?” Kun found himself saying, the way he would if Ten were a pet dog. He cringed internally at himself, but Ten’s tail thumped against the floor excitedly, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth as a lazy smile crept over his lips. Kun continued to scratch between his ears. “Okay, um. Good. You did good.”

Ten grew heavy in his lap, relaxing further. Kun’s hands roamed his thick coat, fingers scratching through the scruff at Ten’s neck and over his wolf’s shoulders. He thought of the collar that now hung on a hook by the front door. It was a hassle to take on and off for Ten, as his wolf skin was so much bigger than his human one, but now Kun kind of missed seeing it around Wolfie’s neck. “I wonder what people would say if I just showed up with you at a local dog park.”

Ten barked in what seemed like light indignation.

“Remember when I taught you how to “sit” for treats?”

Ten exhaled out of his nose and playfully nipped at Kun’s fingers. He pushed his snout into Kun’s belly, heaving a great sigh. Kun allowed him to rest there for a moment, carding his fingers through Ten’s fur absently, before Ten rose and padded into the bathroom. He emerged moments later, shifted back into his human skin and wearing a sweatshirt that hung from his lithe frame and sweatpants that dragged past the bottoms of his feet. “I taught _ you _ ,” Ten said, flopping the long sleeves of the sweatshirt around as though this helped to emphasize his point, “how to give _ me _treats.”

“You were such a good boy,” Kun joked. A slight blush was rising to Ten’s cheeks, and Kun wanted to see the color deepen. “And you learned so quickly!”

“I’m not actually an animal,” Ten pouted. He approached Kun and fell to his knees, laying his head in Kun’s lap just the way Wolfie had earlier. It startled Kun at first, the act feeling so much more intimate now that Ten was a person, but the initial shock wore away quickly, especially after seeing the shadow of doubt and emotion that flickered across Ten’s face. “It’s just so annoying being human.”

“I’m just teasing you,” Kun said softly. “You make a great human.”

Ten snorted.

“No, you do!” Kun said. “That reminds me. I invited some humans over for dinner. I think it’ll be nice, hanging out with some other people, don’t you? You can help me cook.”

Ten narrowed his eyes in suspicion and looked up at Kun. “Who?”

“Uh, Johnny and Taeil,” Kun said. “They’re my neighbors down the street. I visited them before. They seem nice.”

Ten’s eyes narrowed so far they were slits. “No,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“No, don’t invite them,” Ten said. 

“I already have. Why shouldn’t I invite them?”

Ten shook his head and grunted, pushing himself off Kun’s lap. He stood, shaking out his shoulders like he was trying to wick away raindrops. “It’s just not a good idea,” he said.

Kun flattened his feet against the floor and set his lips into a stubborn line. “Well I’m not going to uninvite them, so if you can’t give me a better reason than that, you’ll just have to deal with it.”

Ten’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but he stayed silent, looking miserable about it. Kun gave him another moment to speak up and when the moment passed and Ten said nothing, Kun said sternly, “You can practice your people skills.”

Ten stomped off, out of the room and down the stairs, taking each step as though he were an elephant crashing through the house. When Kun thought he’d given him enough time to cool off, he went down to the first floor to find Ten sullenly curled up on the couch, his back to the world and his face buried in the opened crease of a book. He didn’t respond when Kun asked him if he wanted to help prep for the meal, but the way his shoulders tightened at Kun’s voice indicated he wasn’t asleep. So he was just throwing a little tantrum, then. Great.

Kun rolled his eyes and busied himself in the kitchen, gradually becoming immersed in the familiar and comfortable routine of preparing to entertain guests for dinner.

The window in the kitchen was shut, though Kun couldn’t remember if he had been the one to close it. The line of salt on the sill was full and unbroken again. Kun left it untouched.

. 

Kun wasn’t proud of it, but sometime between putting a whole chicken in the oven to roast and taking a simple, single layer of yellow cake out of the refrigerator to frost with buttercream icing, he forgot about Ten. Baking, just like butchering, was something he did on occasion but was not intensely passionate about, though he did enjoy getting lost in the little details of cake decorating, and he was careful about making sure the layer of frosting was even all around and about piping the snow white icing out in perfect flowers and peaks. By the time he was done and the cake could go back into the refrigerator, the herbs roasting in chicken fat in the oven had perfumed the air. 

Inspired by the pie they’d made earlier for lunch, Kun made a vegetable tart to go along with the chicken, and this was cooling on the table in the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

“Oh!” Kun hummed to himself. Johnny and Taeil were early, but that was alright. He himself liked being punctual and could appreciate others who were as well. “Coming!”

He skipped to the front door, noticing that Ten was no longer on the couch and shrugging, thinking that he would emerge eventually, and hopefully also be fully dressed. Brushing his hands down over his apron, Kun took a deep breath and fixed a smile across his face before opening the door wide.

"Hey, Kun," Johnny said, all limbs as he lumbered across the threshold and threw his arms around Kun's shoulders in a familiar hug. He smelled like pine trees and snow, but his clothes were warm from body heat. Kun returned the hug, his smile genuine; Johnny was just so friendly and loveable. 

Then Johnny let go and stepped to the side, revealing his partner standing just behind him. Taeil offered Kun a stiff smile and short, jerky inclination of his head as a sort of nod. Kun waggled his fingers in a weak wave back at him, unsure how Taeil would respond to Kun approaching him with open arms. "Hello," Taeil said in a soft voice. "Thank you for inviting us into your home."

"Of course!" Kun said. He stepped back to open the door wider, ushering them both in. "Come inside, please!"

"We brought red," Johnny announced, brandishing a bottle of red wine in front of himself.

"And white," Taeil said. The bottle in his hands was frosty with condensation. "Shall I put this in your refrigerator?"

"No, I've got it. Please, sit on the couch? I'll open one of the bottles up!" Kun took both bottles from them and gestured for them to take off their coats and to get comfortable. They hung their coats on the hooks by the front door and took off their boots so they wouldn't trail snow farther into the house, and Kun put the bottle of white away in the fridge, opening the other and pouring two glasses. The red liquid was sticky and thick, clinging to the insides. He took off his apron and draped it over the handle to the oven door. When he returned with them, Taeil was inspecting Ten's collar between his fingers.

"Oh," Kun gasped, coming to an abrupt stop with the glasses of wine in either hand.

Taeil quirked an eyebrow at him. "Got yourself a pet?"

"It's a friend's," Kun said. His stomach flopped over at the lie. "I mean, my friend brought his dog over before. He must have left it."

"Hm," Taeil said. He hung the collar back up on its hook. 

Johnny had already made himself comfortable on the couch and took both glasses of wine from Kun when he offered them to him. "Taeil, honey, come sit down."

"Explains the dog smell," Taeil said.

Kun's ears grew hot as the awful burning of humiliation crawled along his skin. "Does it really smell? That's a little--"

"I don't mean it as a bad thing." Taeil spoke over him calmly, joining his partner on the couch and plucking the glass of wine from Johnny's grip into his own. "It's lovely to have pets. They're great company. I suppose I'm missing ours."

"You have a pet?" Kun tried to imagine a puppy scampering through that dark, stuffy house and couldn't. Perhaps they had a cat.

"Not anymore," Taeil said. His eyes flashed like rubies when he turned his gaze toward Kun.

A shiver passed over Kun's spine. "I'm sorry for your loss?" Kun offered carefully.

Taeil smiled. 

Johnny said loudly, "Kun, it smells amazing in here. What did you make? Wait, pour yourself a glass, please!"

"Oh, of course," Kun said, grateful for the change in topic. "Let me do that and I'll be right back." Taeil was really an odd one, he thought, but he couldn't be that bad if Johnny loved him. Right?

Back in the kitchen, Kun rummaged around in the cabinets to throw together a plate of snacks for them to nibble on as the chicken finished up in the oven. Over the past couple of months living in the cabin, food staples had started to accumulate, and Kun was always cooking and tampering and experimenting, so there was always _ something _he could put together. On a long serving board, he plated the turmeric and fennel seed crackers he’d baked earlier in the week with a block of cheddar and twisted a couple of ribbons of prosciutto into a nest in the leftover space. This, he brought back with him into the living room, along with his own glass of wine.

He sat in the armchair -- free of magazines and clippings, now -- and reached over to clink glasses with Johnny and Taeil when they raised their drinks.

“To being neighbors and friends,” Johnny toasted.

Kun agreed, sipping the rich, full-bodied wine. It coated his tongue pleasantly, velvety as it slid down his throat. Oh, it would go so nicely with the chicken. He sat back in the armchair with a satisfied sigh, excited to share the food he’d made with his guests.

Johnny drank almost half of his glass in one go, while Taeil took the smallest of sips in comparison, his lips curling slightly after he swallowed in thinly veiled distaste. Unfazed, Johnny asked, “Hey, didn’t you say you had someone visiting?”

Kun almost choked on the wine. He coughed a mouthful back into his glass and spluttered gracelessly, “Y-yeah. He’s, um--”

The clicking of claws against the hardwood reached Kun’s ears. He turned in his seat and saw Ten as a wolf slinking out of the tiny closet that contained the washer-dryer unit into the living room to join them, his golden gaze fixed upon Taeil and Johnny. Ten crossed in front of them and stalked toward the armchair, giving Kun an indecipherable look before plopping down at his feet in front of him, ears tipped forward toward their guests on the couch.

Kun wanted a hole to open up in the house and swallow him up. He was equal parts mortified and irritated by Ten’s behavior. Of course, Johnny and Taeil couldn’t know that Ten was a human getting out of human interaction by shifting into his wolf skin, but Kun knew, and it felt like a very pointed act of defiance by the wolf at his feet. He kicked Ten’s side lightly to show his displeasure, and Ten growled at him.

“He’s right here,” Kun said, glaring at Ten. “The someone I wanted you to meet was my friend’s dog. That he left. With me.”

“Hello there,” Johnny gasped aloud, the tone of his voice going high and sweet. He put his glass down on a coaster on the coffee table and reached his hand out for Ten to sniff. “Aren’t you a big boy?”

Ten huffed in response and agreement, sniffing Johnny’s hand disdainfully before ultimately turning his nose away with a grunt, slighting him.

“Not very friendly, is he?” Taeil said.

Kun frowned as annoyance prickled in his chest. “He’s friendly,” Kun said. “Just needs to get used to you.”

Taeil smiled that tight-lipped, strange smile of his again and sipped at his wine daintily. When Ten bared his teeth at him, Taeil bared his teeth right back, and Ten startled, laying himself down onto the floor with a whine. 

Taeil straightened with a smug grin. “What’s his name?”

“...Ten.”

“Ten,” Taeil cooed, his voice hypnotic and smooth. “I see that you’re very used to Kun already.”

Ten growled again, his hackles rising as he stood. On all fours at full height, it was clear he was much, much bigger than the average dog. Johnny’s eyes glittered in wonder, while Taeil’s darkened in satisfaction. 

Kun found the whole thing odd. He’d never seen Ten like this, except perhaps that time Ten had scared off the bear Kun had come across on his jog through the woods. Juggling conflicting feelings of annoyance at Taeil’s weird, almost goading behavior and Ten’s responding aggression with his own need to be a good host, Kun patted Ten’s rump and dragged his hands through his fur, bringing Ten’s attention back to him. “Stop that,” he said. “Be nice to our new friends.”

Ten whined but retreated from his protective stance in front of Kun and sat beside the armchair, looking forlorn as he laid his head on the armrest.

“I’m so sorry. He’s usually very sweet,” Kun said apologetically. 

“A bit of silver in the collar might get him to listen to you better,” Taeil said.

“What?”

Johnny elbowed Taeil in the side, but Taeil only cocked his head and added, “It was something that worked with ours.”

.

Dinner was a stiff and formal affair. Not only did Ten plaster himself to Kun’s side the whole time, he refused to acknowledge anything that Taeil said, thumping his tail against the floor loudly or outright growling every time Taeil opened his mouth. 

Kun had been hoping for an evening of good food and pleasant social interaction and conversation, wanting to see how Ten fared with others -- but as a human, not as a wolf. If this was how Ten was going to behave all the time around strangers, Kun thought, then he had a lot of work to do. He couldn’t very well bring Ten into a coffee shop in town if Ten was going to bite the fingers off of anyone that came too close to Kun.

With Johnny, at least, Ten acted somewhat civil, allowing the tallest of them to scratch between his ears and lifting his paw when Johnny said, “Hand,” halfway through the meal so that he could throw Ten a scrap of chicken to reward the trick. 

Kun learned that Johnny was a freelance writer whose work has been featured in magazines and on blogs and websites. He loved writing about the natural world, but recently had started to dabble in short stories. 

“There’s just something about these woods,” Johnny said, sitting back in his seat with a contented sigh while rubbing his full belly. Half of the chicken was gone, picked clean down to the bone and sinew, and there was nothing left of the vegetable tart but a couple of crumbles of the pastry shell. They’d finished the bottle of red and had moved onto the white, and Kun remembered the cake still sitting in the fridge. “That was delicious.”

“I know what you mean,” Kun said. Ten’s head was in his lap, still, and Kun played with the softness of his ears between his fingers. “I came here to be inspired.”

“And are you?”

“I think I’m still trying to find the right spark,” Kun said, “but yeah. I’m definitely feeling creative.”

“Where do you think that creativity comes from?” Taeil asked.

Kun froze when Ten growled low in warning. He twisted Ten’s ear to scold him, and Ten fell silent. “I guess I’ve just always loved cooking,” Kun mused aloud. “When I’m doing it, when I’m thinking about what to cook, what to try, what I want people to get out of my food? It flows. I get into this zone, and it just flows, like my hands know what they’re doing already.”

“It’s an art form,” Taeil said. “Creativity is its own kind of magic. Not everyone can do what you can.”

Kun flushed, the color in his cheeks exacerbated by the alcohol they’ve been drinking. “Anyone can follow a recipe.”

Taeil's eyes glinted with the color of dying embers, and for a moment Kun thought he could see the shadows behind his irises. “That is not what I mean,” Taeil said.

.

Ten disappeared somewhere inside of the house after Taeil and Johnny left, and when Kun was halfway done with the dishes, Ten slunk up to his side as a human and quietly helped to dry the wet plates, bowls and cutlery with a rag.

Kun couldn’t really define the feeling that must have been roiling off of his skin in waves, that kept Ten quiet and subdued as they worked their way through the kitchen and living room, cleaning up. He was upset that Ten hadn’t wanted their neighbors to come over to begin with, and then he was upset that Taeil had made his skin crawl -- he didn’t like _ not _ enjoying someone else’s company, as it usually made him wonder if it was something about _ himself _that needed to change. Had he been gracious enough? Did the food taste bland to Taeil? Had he done something to offend him? 

Then there was the feeling of sour disappointment in his stomach. With a start, he realized he’d wanted others to meet Ten. As a human. Perhaps he’d wanted someone else to see that Ten was indeed a real living, breathing person in his home, and not a spectre his lonesome brain had dreamed up for him. Perhaps he’d wanted to show him off, too, just a little.

It was well into the evening when they were finished putting the living room back together. Kun folded the throw blanket into a neat square and draped it over the arm of the couch before raising his hands above his head in a long, satisfying stretch. Ten, across from him, did the same.

They looked at each other with the couch between them. Outside, the wind howled. Ten said, bottom lip shivering, “Kun, are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad,” Kun said, stepping around the arm and falling onto the couch as the windows rattled with the force of the gale. “I’m just upset.”

Ten’s shoulders sagged. “What is the difference?”

Kun spread his arm along the back of the couch and invited Ten to join him with a glance. His movements almost cat-like, Ten carefully crawled onto the couch. He seemed to think about plopping down in Kun’s lap like he normally would before deciding to sit stiffly by his side instead, his hands squeezed between his thighs. He was still close enough that Kun could feel his body heat.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, really,” Kun explained, thinking it through for himself as well. “But I’m still...disappointed. I’m upset because I wanted Johnny and Taeil to meet you. I wanted a nice, normal dinner with friends. But maybe that was too much to expect.” Ten had told him it had been months since the last time he was human for an extended period of time. A couple of weeks with Kun probably passed by in a blink to him, and just because he was used to Kun didn’t mean he was used to people. It was what Taeil had said, also, though he couldn’t have known the accuracy of his words. “Maybe you’re not ready for that. I wanted you to be ready but I didn’t ask you first. That wasn’t fair.”

“Ready for what?”

Kun looked at him, at the golden, unnatural glow of his gaze, the sharp line of his profile. Ten’s beauty felt like it was something mystical to be observed and admired. “To be normal,” Kun said quietly. “To be around people. To go to the movies, I don’t know. Grocery shopping, stuff like that.”

Ten moved beside him to hug his knees to his chest. He had pulled the hood of Kun’s sweater over his head, and his face was half hidden when he said, “Is that what you want? For me to be normal?”

Kun’s heart squeezed painfully inside of him. “I just mean that we can’t live like this forever,” Kun whispered. “_ You _ can’t. There’s a whole world outside of this cabin and you should be a part of it.”

“I _ am _a part of it,” Ten said, chewing on the end of a sleeve. “Just not the normal part.”

“But I want you to be,” Kun said. “With me.”

“I can’t be normal. I’m not. I’m a freak. Why do you think I choose my wolf skin over my human one? Because being human is hard. The rules. The emotions. The memories.” His breath rattled when he inhaled. “I like being human with you, though. It’s not as bad. But I’m sorry it’s not enough.” Ten’s eyes shone with tears. He scrubbed the back of his hand angrily across his face and sniffled when he looked away, refusing to meet Kun’s gaze. 

“It _ is _enough,” Kun said. He felt unpleasantly warm, especially his palms; his hands itched to touch Ten, to comfort him. He thought of the leftover chicken in the kitchen and wondered if he could heat it back up and feed it to Ten with his fingers, piece by piece, if that would make him feel better. “I’m sorry. I’m not explaining it well.”

“You’re explaining it just fine.” Ten hunched further into himself and his words became muffled as he pressed his face into his knees. “You don’t want magic. You don’t believe it’s a part of you, so you don’t want it, any part of it. And you wish I were human -- fully human.”

“Magic isn’t real,” Kun whispered.

Ten finally looked at him, and his expression was one of utter betrayal and heartbreak that made Kun feel like there was milk curdling in his stomach. “How can you say that?” Ten gasped. “_ I’m _ real.”

“There must be some explanation for you--”

“I was Bitten--”

“A scientific one,” Kun finished. He held onto the thought tenaciously. “A logical one.”

The sadness on Ten’s face was almost too much for Kun to bear, and it was mixed with something even worse: pity. Ten reached out to touch him with a sleeve-covered hand. His fingers grazed over Kun’s cheek as he cupped his palm under Kun’s jaw tenderly. 

“You don’t want to see,” Ten said. “You’re the one who’s not ready.”

He brushed his thumb so softly across the skin under Kun’s eye that it felt like a kiss. Before Kun could respond or even lean into the touch, Ten had rolled off of the couch and into his wolf skin. Kun’s hoodie and sweats lay discarded under his feet. 

“Ten,” Kun said desperately. “Don’t.”

Ten swung his head around and let out a low, mournful whine. He left Kun on the couch and padded over to the back door, easing it open with his shoulder before taking off through the snow into the night. Moments later, in the woods somewhere, a wolf howled, and Kun was alone.

.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! comments and kudos appreciated! awooooo!
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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